


Switch On/Black Swan

by UnlimitedLostWorks



Category: Fate/EXTRA, Fate/Grand Order, Fate/stay night & Related Fandoms
Genre: Alternate Universe, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-24
Updated: 2019-02-24
Packaged: 2019-11-05 00:52:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,563
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17908928
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/UnlimitedLostWorks/pseuds/UnlimitedLostWorks
Summary: When she looks at that walking corpse, Meltlilith feels nothing but a urge to crush it.





	Switch On/Black Swan

She wants to crush him, she thinks. There's something about that half-collapsed existence that offends every sense she has left. She hates the smell of blood and gunpowder that hangs over him, like the aftermath of a shooting. She hates watching those golden cracks spread over his body, like a pane of glass in the moment of shattering. She hates the grinding sound of steel against steel when her legs bite into his flesh, only to find interlocked swords beneath. Even the taste of the mana she saps from him with every wound she inflicts is foul, sulfuric.

She can't touch him, of course, but she has no wish to. Just the thought makes her nauseous. Really, she's amazed he can even still stand and fight. That thing is more like a living mass of curses, a cup spilling over with the accumulation of it's own depravity-- there is no man left there. She decides right there that she will just kill him, stab, slash, break him until there's nothing left. She won't absorb him-- she would rather die than take that befouled Saint Graph into her own body. Accepting even one of the curses that this Servant drips with is akin to destroying a priceless work of art. It's a mercy, really, to put this walking corpse out of it's misery. What's the point in something like that living?

he pulls the triggers of his strangely shaped guns, and she slices the bullets out of the air with a single twitch of her steel legs. It irritates her, how little he moves. She can't even call it a dance, fighting someone who relies so heavily on those weapons. He just leaps away when she gets close enough, not caring if she nicks him. Every time. Does he not know his place? If something that disgusting is going to show it's face to her, it should at least try to put up a good fight when she exterminates it. This is merely frustrating. He doesn't even react, when she does manage to strike him. No screaming, not even a grunt. An intake of breath, and suddenly his guns are swords, pushing back the elegant scythes that adorn her lower half for just long enough for him to reposition once more. He doesn't even bleed properly, creaking metal beneath his skin instead of flesh and bone. Really, this is nothing but boring for her.

The Archer's Master calls out to him, and he looks away from her for just a moment. A perfect chance, she thinks. She leaps, intent on decapitating him with a single graceful kick, as befitting a dancer like her. But-- he hadn't really stopped paying attention, had he? She's moving too fast to hear what he's saying, but she can see his lips move. His gun coughs one more time, and this time, she feels it--

__

_If I'm hit by that, I'll die. I'll die. I'll die. I'll definitely die._

She is forced to redirect her momentum, to almost jump out of the arena to avoid that shot. The bullet impacts the wall of computerized magic that is meant to pen them in, and after a moment, swords erupt from every line in the firewall like termites bursting from the woodwork. The spell shatters into motes of magical energy, the blades tearing it to ribbons from the outside. She hears him this time, a soft clucking of his tongue, as if irritated that he hadn't hit his actual target, but the situation is nonetheless favorable to him. She turns to swoop down on him again, but he's already gone, retreated along with his Master. She feels like screaming.

\---

She's hunting them through the labyrinth, now. It took a few wandering mobs to work through her frustrations, but she's cleared her head, even if the burning desire to destroy that Archer remains. The Master wasn't important at all-- she doubted they were even supposed to have been pulled to the Far Side in the first place. It's a waste of her time, really. There are better things to be doing, more important objectives to be fulfilled. But, she can't forget about that Servant who escaped her. He's certainly not a Heroic Spirit. No, he's too tainted to even be called forth as an Anti-Hero. She wonders if he's even a Servant. Sometimes, the grudges of all those who've died in the Moon Cell can fashion themselves into something like a human, a dead-faced monster that bleeds curses. Perhaps he's something like that. She's revolted, but so too is she more fascinated than she'd ever admit to herself. Killing him is her only goal for now, even if part of her thinks he might drop dead before she even has a chance.

She can't conceal her presence like her sister, though it's not as if Passionlip is any good at hiding even with that ability. No, she simply doesn't need to. She's so fast that she can vanish from view the moment their heads start to turn towards her, and she doesn't care if they can sense that she's chasing them-- if anything, she relishes the terror in the Master's eyes. The Archer's expression betrays no such emotion, of course. He's stoic in a way that makes her want to brutalize him until that wall breaks. She'd like to hear his screams, eventually, but it will weigh on her mind to leave him alive. She'll just kill him now, like she'd planned.

"Disappear."

She's appeared directly behind them, and they whirl around to face her, but it's already too late.

****

****

**"Saraswati Meltout."**

****

****

She jumps higher than ever before, even as the twisting storm of water sweeps up the both of them, off-guard and unprepared for her Noble Phantasm. In the moment before she begins to fall from her ascent, she takes aim at her target, and launches herself. He's trying to communicate with his master, but the water eats words and thoughts alike, makes it impossible for them to understand each other when they're caught in her whirlpool. It's too late, anyway. Like a spear thrown with pinpoint accuracy, she pierces through the whirlpool to impale the Archer, her legs held together to form a javelin that punches through his steel-laced flesh like it was paper. He twitches for a moment, his eyes dark, and she thinks she's won, that she's crushed this irritating insect for good.

she doesn't expect the gun to still be in his hand, or for him to still be able to move. From this close, their bodies almost interwined, she can hear what he's saying this time.

"--So as I pray, **Unlimited Lost Works**."

He's dead as soon as the bullet leaves the chamber, already beginning to fade into motes of spiritual data, but that will not stop it's travel. His corpse isn't disappearing fast enough for her to free her legs. She tries to raise one useless arm to intercept it, and--

Agony, written in scarlet and white across her mind. She can't think as the swords form within her body, as that befouled nameless spirit's own interior world forcibly manifests itself with her flesh as the host. If she were her sister, she might survive, might even enjoy the way the swords tore her apart, but Meltlilith's existence is to destroy, not to be destroyed. In the moment before her spiritual core burns out, she understands that she is as fragile as anything else.

 

\---

__

__

__

_Another time, another world--_

__

__

 

She's falling into the depths, tendrils of hair dragging her down. She can't feel much of anything any more, but that's okay. She can't think properly, content to drown in this abyssal ocean. She doesn't remember what she was doing, why it's a problem that this hair is wrapping itself around her, but--

"No. Not another chance, not this time. This is your grave, Beast."

That voice, rough as swords clashing, wakes her up, burns away the water in her lungs. She feels the impact of bullets, but they did not hit her-- no, their purpose was to free her from what was weighing her down. Her vision is blurry and her eyes hurt, but she still tries to see him. She thought he was dead, she'd seen his corpse-- ah. Of course. It wasn't that he'd died. Rather, it was that he'd always been dead. He'd just willed his corpse to walk a little further. If he was already little more than that, then it wasn't a problem to force himself a little further, just this once. How troublesome. It wasn't fair for him to act like a hero in front of her. She can't hear what he's saying to the wailing woman below them, but she can see his face, at least. It reminds her of someone, she thinks, someone she might have loved. Even if it's a pale imitation, or a fake-- the resemblance is enough for her. 

He clips something to her, and she feels her body begin to rise, pulled out of the abyss like a swan taking flight, Odile until the end. Almost absently, she notes there is nothing to pull him up. He is no swan, and he intends to die down here, clipping the Beast's wings. An apology for what he's wrought before, perhaps.

Well, if she shed a tear for that false hero, who would know but her?


End file.
